Fringe "Forced Perspective" TV REVIEW

Drawn to the future...

THE ONE WHERE Olivia’s trying to understand the Observers, while a teen is drawing pictures of the future.

UNIVERSE Over here – orange credits version.

VERDICT You’ve got to admire the genius of Fringe ’s writing team. Via the media of multiple universes, rearranged timelines and ingenious storytelling, they’ve managed to re-establish the central character dynamic that drove the early seasons. So with Walter now accepting Peter, and no romantic issues for Peter and Olivia to contend with, the old team are free to look into a standalone case as they would have done in the old days. It’s good to have them back.

It’s a decent story, too, the subtly told tale of Emily, a teen girl cursed with the “gift” of seeing the future. It’s less an investigation than a mission to help Emily come to terms with her power and find some practical use for her sketches of things to come. There’s not much original here but it’s delivered in such a clever, understated way that you can’t help being taken in. With visual fireworks kept to a minimum (aside from a brilliant scene where Emily walks through a frozen explosion in her mind), this is all about interpersonal relationships. Indeed, it’s quite an achievement to get you caring about a family who’ve been forced to relocate and chop and change their lives for years, in under an hour – and Emily’s death at the end of the episode is truly heartbreaking.

There’s still a bit of interest for fans of the arc plot, with a bit of Peter and Walter rebuilding the Machine, some Observer lore, and Olivia telling the devious Nina that she sees her as a mother figure. But what does the Massive Dynamic MD have planned for Agent Dunham?

SPECULATION We know that Nina and Massive Dynamic tried to experiment on Emily. In this timeline, was Nina responsible for the Cortexiphan-type experiments Walter and William Bell carried out in our world?